Man who drove from Michigan for sex with teen sentenced to prison

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JANESVILLE—Speaking through tears Wednesday morning, the Janesville woman recalled how her family felt before police arrested the Michigan man seated across from her, who was having lewd online conversations with her teen daughter and tried to meet her for sex.

“We lived in constant fear,” the woman said.

Police arrested the man, 66-year-old Jerry Osmolinski, after he drove more than 300 miles from his home in Belding, Mich., to Janesville to have sex with the girl in 2012.

Osmolinski pleaded guilty in August to two felonies, and on Wednesday Judge Kenneth Forbeck sentenced him to 10 years in prison and 10 years of extended release.

Forbeck gave a stern rebuke to claims by Osmolinski's attorney that he is a low-risk offender.

“What you did here was planned and continuous and happened over a long period of time,” Forbeck said.

“You're not a low risk—you're a typical pedophile,” he added.

As Forbeck read Osmolinski's sentence, the woman cried and smiled from her seat in the courtroom gallery.

The woman first contacted police in May of 2012, believing her 12-year-old daughter “was engaging in risky online behavior,” according to a criminal complaint.

A Janesville detective eventually took over the girl's account and started messaging with Osmolinski, who sent her sexually explicit emails and pornographic photos, authorities said.

The conversations indicated Osmolinski thought the girl was 14, according to the complaint.

On July 16, 2012, Osmolinski drove from his home in Michigan to meet the girl, police said, and was arrested when he arrived in Janesville.

He was convicted in August of using a computer to facilitate a child sex crime and exposing a child to harmful material.

Osmolinski's attorney, Stephen Carpenter, asked Forbeck to consider his client's age and health problems in determining a sentence.

“If sentenced to prison … he's not going to make it,” Carpenter said.

Forbeck decided he couldn't offer leniency, however, telling Osmolinski that if he went on probation he was “going to be back on a computer somewhere.”